7 Sims in 7 Days – Day 6: For My Next Trick…

This sim involves a bit of very gentle trickery on your part as you use your little-known ability to mind-read as a way of enlivening some of the “possibly less interesting?” aspects of research methods. As with some of the other sims in the series this is a building-block resource; while it’s not very useful, […]

7 Sims in 7 Days – Day 4: The Anomie Within

This short (5 – 10 minute) sim can be used whenever you want to introduce the concept of anomie, such as if you’re introducing Merton’s Strain Theory or looking at Garfinkel’s breaching experiments. The package includes a little bit of background on breaching experiments and a couple of different anomie variations – mild and strong […]

7 Sims in 7 Days – Day 3: Window Shopping / The Art of Walking

Although these are two different sims I’ve included them together because both involve thinking about the “rules of everyday social interaction”, albeit in different ways: Window shopping is designed to encourage students to think systematically about the “underlying rules” of relatively mundane behavior. It can be used to simulate sociological research (such as field experiments […]

ATSS Teacher Support Materials

Those of you with long memories may recall the ATSS (Association for the Teaching of Social Science), an organisation that was eventually folded into the British Sociological Association and lives on (sort-of) in their Teaching Group. Anyway, a while back (probably 10 years or so?) ATSS produced a range of Teacher Support booklets, some of […]

Teaching A-level Research Methods: Part 3

Talk the Walk At this point students need to get to grips with learning the basics of research methods. How you organise this is up to you, but one way is to get students to take ownership of their learning: If there are sufficient students, split the class into groups and give each group responsibility […]

Teaching A-level Research Methods: Part 2

Virtual Research in a Real Location The idea here is that we use students’ knowledge of a real location as the basis for virtual research: while the scenario is real – a location such as a high street, shopping mall, school or college – students aren’t required to carry-out any real (time-consuming) research. Rather, they […]

Teaching A-level Research Methods: Part 1

A few years ago I was asked to deliver a Conference on “Sociology and the Internet” to teachers interested in learning more about what was available on the Web and how to incorporate this material into their teaching. The “one proviso” stipulated by the commissioning company was that “there would not be any access to […]

Educational Achievement: Professor Becky Francis

In this short (10 minute) interview, (recorded in 2009 in what looks and sounds like a cupboard somewhere…apologies for the less than pristine sound quality and video), Professor Becky Francis talks about her research into educational achievement.

Beyond Milgram: Obedience and Identity

In the early 1960s two apparently-unrelated events, separated by thousands of miles, took place that, in their own way, shocked the world. The first, in early 1961, was the Jerusalem trial of Adolph Eichmann. He was accused – and subsequently convicted – of being one of the organisers of the Nazi Concentration Camps in which […]

Experimental Research Methods

Our latest Psychology On-Demand compilation brings together 3 short films designed to clarify and consolidate the meaning of experimental methods by looking at the different ways psychologists carry out and design experiments and evaluate their comparative strengths and limitations. Illustrative case studies are used throughout for application and advice is given on key points of […]

Laboratory Experiments Preview

Part of our new Revising Psychology Series aimed at a-level and ap psychology students and teachers. The full film covers key: definitions: aim, method and environment. concepts: dependent and independent variables examples: Bandura, Maguire, Stroop Effect evaluation: identifying strengths and weaknesses

Psychology: A whole new set of films

We’re starting to release the first batch of films in our new Revising Psychology series – short, informative, videos aimed at students and teachers and designed to both consolidate learning and suggest ways to gain the best possible exam grade. The films can be rented (48-hours) or bought (individually or in selected bundles) and can […]

Letting Children Be Children: The Bailey Report

The Bailey Report (Letting Children Be Children, 2011) is an “Independent Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood” that  highlights a range of issues (and moral concerns bordering on panics) around families, children, childhood and the media. These, if you’re so inclined, can be used as the basis for interesting discussions around both contemporary […]